Another stumbling point in everyday language teaching and learning is to make students complete some research, do some writing about what they have researched and then present it in class. The fact that students hate writing in a foreign language is already enough. But have them do some research prior to it and then, on top of it, force them to speak in class! Blasphemous!
Well, there is a cure for that.
Several years ago, I used to teach Business English at a tertiary institution where my students had to prepare for the TOEFL test and for an entrance exam for an MBA course in the States. My group included students from lower intermediate to advanced students, which is why, quite expectedly, I had great difficulty finding a way of teaching that would cater for their different levels.
One aspect that I had to cover in my classes was that of advertising and marketing. One of the units was covering the process of launching and commercialising new products. Different segments were being introduced, such as creating an advertising plan, developing a news media strategy, selecting sales channels as well as sales promotions and reaching customers. One way to present and sell products is at a trade fair. Therefore, I came up with the idea to organise a class fair of non-existent products/ services!
The students were asked to come up with products or services that did not exist! They had to prepare an advertisement for the product/ service, preferably the product itself. They could make a poster, prepare a PowerPoint, make their own video or song. The more creative ones among them came up with all of these.
Clear instructions had to be provided to include the research part. Namely, the students had to make sure they thoroughly investigated the particular model of advertisement, commercial, endorsement, etc. they decided to use. They had to find out all about the model, analyse it properly and apply it to their own product/ service in as many details as possible.
For instance, if they had opted for the display stand, a rather popular one and often seen in big shopping centres and supermarkets, they would have to really build it and include all the tiny details that go with it. If they had chosen the endorsement, such as the one often seen in magazines, they would have to use Photoshop or some other imaging tool.
Although the idea scared some of the students off, an incentive was provided in the form of extra points for excellent oral and visual presentations of the product/ service at the fair. Also, there had to be enough time for the students to prepare for the fair.
Some of the project/ services my students presented in class included the following:
1. Weed cereals - The student had made the box and put some grass into it. He decorated the box by pasting real paper on it with a photoshopped image of weed and cereals so that the cereals actually looked as if made of weed. A boy was presented pouring the cereals into a bowl. The student had also added all the text usually found on cereal boxes including ingredients and the details related to the producer. To be honest, his final presentation in class was so good that we were at the verge of paying him money for the cereals! He had prepared an excellent speech!
2. Rent-a-professorbot - The student had prepared the very unusual service of renting a robot professor. He had prepared a poster, where there was an image of me, but looking as a robot. The advertising slogan printed on the poster was: She'll teach you English without ever complaining about you! This presentation was very funny as it was a clear allusion to me, but in a very subtle and inoffensive way. The spoken performance was also very good.
3. Invisibility cream - The student had taken an old cream jar which he wrapped in his own label. He had done some photoshopping presenting the stages through which the person using the cream would pass while becoming invisible. He had put some Nutella into the jar, which made the presentation of the product look even funnier as he actually put the Nutella on his face claiming that he was invisible! The performance was at a high level as well.
4. Barum-barum - A group of six students chose to prepare a beverage made of water, cocoa powder and a bit of rum flavour usually used for cakes. This presentation was the most brilliant one as the students had actually prepared the beverage, brought it to class, arranged a sales stand, prepared a written presentation illustrating the product and recorded their own video commercials, i.e. three commercials they themselves acted in! I consider this presentation the best that any group of students has ever made for any of my Business English classes because they all spoke, they had all written and they had all participated, which is not quite common when a group of several students (allegedly together) prepare some group assignment.
There are many more examples, but the scope of a regular post would be by far exceeded. After all, there should be some room for new ideas in the future. I must admit that I still keep the recordings, the posters, the PowerPoints, the photographs I took while they were presenting their products and services. I can only recommend this kind of computer-assisted learning as it is a lot of fun and at the same time yielding really good results in three different skills: reading, writing, speaking!
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